It's more complicated than that. We use (relatively incompetent) AIs all over the place, and there is no public outcry, even as we develop combat AI for our UAVs and ground based combat robots, most likely because everyone thinks of AIs as merely idiot-savant servants or computer programs. Few people think much about the distinction between specialized AIs and general AI, probably because we don't actually have any general AI, though no doubt they understand that the simpler AI "can't become self-aware".

People dangerously anthropomorphize AI, expecting it by default to assign huge values to human life (huge negative values in the case of "rogue AI"), with a common failure mode of immediate and incompetent homicidal rampage while being plagued by various human failings. Even general AIs are viewed as being inferior to humans in several aspects.

Overall, there is not a general awareness that a non-friendly general AI might cause a total extinction of human life due to apathy.